materials overview

Tolerance day 2017 - Truth Detective materials

Lesson PlansENGLISHTruth DetectivesGet children thinking like a truth detective. This lesson develops the questioning, listening, assessing and communication skills that add breadth, depth and perspective to students’ writing. How quickly can they find the right questions to differentiate between Prince Harry and Donald Trump? When a controversial incident occurs at school, can they get to the bottom of what really happened? Includes a downloadable poster of a set of cute characters to reinforce the need to ask, ‘Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?’

Young Journalism Competition with the Week Junior and the Guardian FoundationApply their new found writing skills by entering the Learn2Think young journalism prize. They can win a laptop with up to 500 words on a topic they feel strongly about.

Perfect WorldsThis is a thought provoking creative writing exercise using new Chapter book, ‘Who Made you the Boss?’ and the children’s classic ‘Babar the King’ as inspiration. Gets pupils thinking about what they don’t like about the world they live in now, and create their own ‘perfect worlds’.

MATHS AND SCIENCE

Truth DetectivesThis lesson plan gets children to test the plausibility of statistics, and understand why it’s important to gather and present data in a reliable way. Being able to spot errors and misuse of data will allow them to critically assess information and avoid misleading assumptions.

Curriculum-linked activities

HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

’42 Moments in World History’This giant colourful poster activity, produced with ‘What on Earth Books?’, asks children to step back and connect the dots of the past. On the poster they will fill in what they consider to be the 42 key moments of history, 7 for each region of the world. It will broaden children’s perspectives and get them to acknowledge the role all cultures have played in creating the world we live in today.

ENGLISHHighly varied list of thought provoking books that will widen children’s perspectives and get them thinking critically. Also included are some that explore that nature of ‘truth’.

ASSEMBLIESPoliticsThis scripted assembly is designed for Year 6 to deliver. It is a tongue in cheek and fact packed review of an ‘interesting’ year in international politics. It broadens children’s perspectives and gets them thinking critically about world events and how they are being presented.

Blind Elephant This lesson plan (see above) can be adapted for an assembly that looks at how ‘truth’ is made up of many component parts - often you can’t see the whole picture by yourself. Seven children are blindfolded and try to identify an object by only getting to hold one component (e.g. something that comes in a flat pack – what will it become? Dismantled deck chair). They have to compare notes to work it out. Includes suggested follow-up discussion.

Truth DetectivesAct out the ‘Great Water Debacle’ and interview the witnesses for a fun interactive class or whole school assembly. Can be followed up with discussions in class about how to get as close to the truth of a situation as you can.

2016 - RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND VALUING DIVERSITY

ART'Perspective Circle’ - an engaging exercise using Picasso and the cubists to explore different viewpoints and the challenges of working as a team.

ASSEMBLYFor Tolerance Day (Approx15 mins)A whole school interactive assembly that explains what Tolerance Day is, why we need it and what the school is doing to celebrate it. It includes a game in which pupils experience for themselves how intolerance can cause division.

ENGLISH‘The Sneetches’, by Dr Seuss. In 1998 NATO translated this story into Serbo-Croatian and planned to distribute 500,000 copies to children in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as part of a campaign to encourage tolerance. Dr Seuss himself wrote it to satirise intolerance and anti-Semitism in 1953. This set of lesson plans gets pupils to actively engage with the idea of intolerance and how it can be dramatised though story-telling.

DRAMA/CLASS ASSEMBLYA whole- class dramatisation of ‘Journey to the Beginning of the World’ - exploring the epic stories cultures have told throughout the ages about how the earth was created. Created and tested by Y5, Grafton Primary, Islington, London.

FORM TIMEPaper chain craft activity for the whole school community to celebrate ToDay together.

HISTORY‘Understanding Rights and Freedoms’ uses the ‘Magna Carta Chronicle’ to look at how intolerance has restricted people’s freedoms throughout history.

MATHS/ICTThe ‘DNA’ of our class/school - following the national curriculum requirement for statistics, this lesson plan asks pupils to survey their class (and for Years 5 & 6 their school) to reveal the levels of diversity. They then have to present this information in graph form.

PSHE/CITIZENSHIPResisting intolerance - a lesson that helps pupils understand the brain science at work when they get angry and provides them with tools to manage anger positively,

Identity and Me- a lesson that gets pupils to explore what makes up their identity and how we look at the identity of others.